A Parent's Questions About Essays

One of my parents who always asks great questions recently sent me this inquiry:

I like short sentences. They get to the point. Readers have short attention spans. So do I. Long sentences distract from big ideas. Short snappy sentences grab attention. In academic writing, it seems like the opposite with long sentences, overly descriptive language, big words, and questionable use of colons and semicolons rule the day; it is as if extended sentences that proceed with more punctuation show more sophistication and intelligence, and getting to the point directly is seen as sophomoric, indolent, languorous and callow. What do college admissions officers prefer to read? Asking for a friend.

Here was my reply:

Back in 2021, during the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, there was a publicized case of a young man admitted to Stanford with a Common App personal essay that had one 3-word sentence written over and over again: "Black lives matter." In the same application cycle, a student of mine with a gift for math wrote a very different personal essay on how complex math could be used to solve society’s biggest problems. His sentences tended to be long, loaded with explanations of how math is a reflection of the natural world and convincing examples of how math could be used in the service of mankind. He was admitted to Cornell, his first choice.

Like you, I prefer writing that’s lean, but I don’t think there’s a rule about sentence length. During reading season, admission reps may have to slog through as many as thirty essays a day. Fatigue is a hazard. For an applicant’s essay to break through this fog and be memorable, I believe sentence length is less crucial than three other things: originality of thought, authenticity of story or theme, and the depth of the writer’s commitment to their argument. The essay must reach out from the page and grab the reader by the collar, from the first sentence on. Like any good book or essay, the job of each sentence is simply to make the reader want to read the next. I like to think of sentences as dominoes, each one knocking down the next until all that’s left at the end is silence.

But these are teenagers, after all, not MFA writing candidates, and admission reps (some of whom are not much older than teenagers themselves) will give applicants a lot of slack for imperfect sentences and fussy punctuation. For the record, I think the Stanford essay probably undersold that applicant, and if he had been my student I would have advised another approach to the theme of Black Lives Matter. But I’m guessing he got points for being a risk-taker, and that everything else in his application file qualified him for admission anyway. The personal essay is just one of many things that help the admission office understand who the candidate is and how they will help make the campus a more interesting, challenging, and inclusive place.